Samsung’s Next Battleground: Low-Cost Phones

3/22/2013 2:55AM

Samsung is pushing into the low-cost mobile phone market with devices costing less than $100. The WSJ’s Yun-Hee Kim tells us why Samsung wants to also dominate emerging markets like Indonesia and India.

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

I ... the the ... its quest to dominate immobile phone market globally Samsung is now eyeing ... the low end of the smartphone market ... welcome to Asia Today Ahmadi the Sanchanta ... with me is in he can ... Wall Street Journal Technology Editor to discuss this new trend ... in he had a great story today on Samsung which is now going into the low end of the smartphone market ... that we associate Samsung with a very high and Galaxy ... but what are they doing to launch its lower end phones is what they call ... I will be competing in this market for a long time but the meat gets the hype surrounding the Galaxy S are found ... and to set earlier this month they launched the Galaxy S four in your making a big push into the U S market ... I have read you know they have really big ambitions in the space ... to them onto nice feature phones header from fifty to one hundred dollars and it scared to markets like ... India Indonesia and Russia ... and Central and South America ... and so that this will enable Samsung to really see more volume and scale ... in order to gain more market share ... the interesting thing is I mean their biggest competitor Apple as we all know basically has won a model of the I phone in their many permutations of that model but it ... would cost five hundred dollars s when things going for this high in those strategy ... that their analysts out there who say that this could really in it then their margins ... but what are they saying on that when when they didn't really iam common about you know what are they making my need money from the snow and ... ten cents but for Samsung scale is really important volumes really important ... so while the making a big push in terms of marketing and Galaxy line of smartphones ... um I think you know competing in this market where demand is very strong and there's growth potential ... really helps them with you know in PC shipments globally ... and that's actually an evil Samsung to overtake another contender in this market which is Nokia ... Nokia has long competed in ... the low end market but ... in the markets like Indonesia I mean Samsung is really gaining ground ... the danger that Samsung was just chasing scale at the expense of profitability ... right that's exactly what analysts are really concerned about because here is Samsung to make a lot of money from the high end devices and they're trying to ... milk has come out with his clever asked if he were really ... you know competing in the Kenyan half the market ... but if they're pushing these cheaper handsets to aggressively ... into margins and a main road ... and some Samsung's handset business has done really well I mean it's really the profit driver for the company now sees the post of record earnings in twenty twelve ... and since there's of selling these cheaper handsets and margins are going to cool ... down so that is ... the big risk for Samsung ... um but it seems like BP realize to be number one we have to have a diversified fully know ... so ... an interesting thing is all look growth that we're seeing now is in the emerging markets for that one size ... and the that's in many ways become the next battleground for all of the smartphone maker's what the Samson see the demand coming from ... while it did sound you know these are those that are a hundred dollars in the future yourself on the sixty nine dollars and my kid ... umm into market like Indonesia and then it's can be very hard because even ... you know they're ... they're a lot of cheaper ... aam products there are so ... that's where Samsung sees that ok if we sell enough of these phones ... then it'll help us in the know when they do in this market ... great thanks so much for more this story please go to WSJ dot